Ineos Grenadier First Test: Old School Cool, Off Road Ready

MotorTrend

The Ineos Grenadier looks a lot like a Defender

Transcript

00:00Are you the kind of person that's afraid of change?

00:05Do you think that all modern day cars are far too complicated, and that everything was

00:09better in the olden days?

00:11If that's the case, then this might just be the vehicle for you.

00:15Ineos Grenadier, look familiar?

00:31Yeah, it looks quite a lot like the Land Rover Defender, doesn't it?

00:36The Land Rover Defender was in constant production for well over six decades, until a few years

00:43ago, Jaguar Land Rover made the difficult decision to stop producing the classic off-roader.

00:49Well, one night, British billionaire and petrochemical company owner Jim Ratcliffe, Sir Jim Ratcliffe

00:56I should say, was in his favourite pub, the Grenadier, in Belgravia, in London, and he

01:02was talking with his friends about this.

01:06He was really annoyed.

01:07He loves the Defender.

01:09He thinks it's the perfect off-road machine, symbol of Britain, to be celebrated.

01:17So anyway, back to Jim Ratcliffe.

01:18He was upset that Jaguar Land Rover were going to stop making the Defender, and he was in

01:24his favourite pub, and he said one night, well, why don't we just make a Defender?

01:31Why doesn't my company, Ineos, make a Defender?

01:34And that is how the Grenadier, which was the name of the pub they were in, came to be.

01:39It took well over three years to develop the car.

01:45Goes through the process of designing their own version of the Defender.

01:49It is, to be clear, not a Defender that's been modernised.

01:51This is a new vehicle.

01:52Ratcliffe just shares a lot, and I do mean a lot, of visual DNA with the Defender.

01:58So here we have it, the Ineos Grenadier.

02:00I'm going to let you in on a little secret.

02:03I'm going to say something now that I hoped I wouldn't have to say, and that is that unfortunately,

02:10I find the Grenadier a little bit underwhelming on road.

02:16Now obviously, the original Defender's natural habitat was never on road, right?

02:22It was made for agricultural use, primarily.

02:27No one in their right mind would wantonly drive one of the old Defenders on the road

02:33for pleasure.

02:34That wasn't a pleasurable experience.

02:36You simply drove it from agricultural space to agricultural space.

02:40And, you know, with the Grenadier, they set out with the ambition of making an updated

02:46Defender.

02:47And they're going to have done that, but that means that a lot of the Defender's road

02:51characteristics, for me at least, prevail.

02:54The steering, there's so much play in the wheel and so much rotation, the ratio is incredible.

03:00You can turn this wheel, I don't know, 18 or 19 hundred times, seemingly, before you

03:05find the lock.

03:06Look at this, which again, is like an old school Defender, right, so it's charming,

03:10but on the road, it's very hard to keep the car in a straight line, there's a lot of play

03:14in the wheel.

03:15You're making lots of micro-adjustments and swerving around a little bit as a result,

03:20at which point, the fact that this is a body-on-frame car, and it's quite top-heavy, comes into

03:28play and you do end up getting quite a lot of lean and body roll, which is a little disconcerting

03:32from time to time.

03:33There's no blind-spot detection, you can't see anything out of the rear mirror because

03:38there's a full-size spare in the way.

03:41And the power from the inline 6-litre turbocharged BMW engine is not great, 281 horsepower and

03:49333 pound-feet of torque sounds okay, it's quite slushy, it'll get up to highway speeds,

03:58but trying to overtake is a lengthy and drawn-out process.

04:01Now, again, I'm going to caveat all of that by saying, it's not really what this vehicle's

04:07raison d'etre was, right?

04:09This vehicle, as with the Defender, was all about being able to get out there.

04:14And look, we've made it out here, we're out on the trails.

04:17This is where the Ineos Grenadier should show its true colours.

04:22Now it's interesting, that very point that I was just lamenting the Grenadier for, steering,

04:29actually comes into its own here.

04:32And I think that was probably part of the reason why the steering feels the way it does,

04:37because off-road, where you're having to make lots of miniature adjustments, or rather

04:42the wheels are making lots of miniature adjustments underneath the body of the car, as they're

04:46traversing all these rocks and cracks and crevices, and that obviously transfers up

04:51through the steering wheel, well they don't want this much of a rotation to result in

04:56you flying off into that bush over there, right?

04:58So look, I've got all of this movement, and this can go both ways, it can be me moving

05:03the wheels or the wheels moving the steering wheel, and look, I'm still basically tracking

05:06straight.

05:07So that's a good thing.

05:09Again, the power, nice and torquey, now we're out on the off-road, you can feel the benefit.

05:23At Motor Trend, we're always looking for new ways to push vehicles to their limits.

05:27Not just on the road, but on all kinds of incredible off-road trails.

05:31From rock crawling to multi-day overland adventures, we use OnX Off-Road from start to finish,

05:38and even when stuff goes sideways.

05:40No cell reception?

05:41No problem.

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05:49track of where you've been, and where you're going.

05:51For land use boundaries, places of interest, thousands of trails graded by difficulty,

05:56and more, we use OnX Off-Road every time we get out of town.

06:01If you want to discover places like the ones we explored today, scan the QR code, or click

06:07the link in the bio, to learn more about OnX Off-Road.

06:13What else can I tell you?

06:14Well, the interior.

06:15We've got a big screen here, but one of the things that does frustrate me, and this isn't

06:20exclusive to the Grenadier, but Ineos have fallen into this trap, is that the screen

06:24is not angled at all toward the driver, it's flush, it's straight, and that means that

06:30I'm getting screen glare from that window back there, 150% of the time.

06:35So frustrating, because half the time I'm having to do this, to check where I'm going.

06:40So there we are.

06:42But otherwise, I quite like the interior, with one exception, and that is this.

06:47This BMW shifter is unforgivable.

06:52Whether it was something that BMW insisted on, I don't know why they would, but hey,

06:57who knows, it certainly couldn't have been laziness on Ineos' part, because that would

07:00be foolish.

07:01They've spent so much time, clearly, crafting an interior that is, you me, this is their

07:08first vehicle, remember?

07:09Even though they're loosely basing it on the Defender, they of course want this vehicle

07:13to feel like an Ineos.

07:14At the end of the day, they, I'm sure, have aspirations to expand their model line-up,

07:19they already have the Quartermaster, the truck version, but I'm sure that in the future

07:22they'll have more vehicles.

07:25And they've done great work in here, with the exception of this BMW shifter, it just

07:31genuinely makes me angry every time I see it, it makes me really frustrated.

07:36It would be the first thing I would change, that and adding a roof rack.

07:39There's no roof rack on this model, despite it being the Trailmaster off-road version,

07:45despite it having the optional ladder.

07:48What is the point in having the optional ladder if you can't also have a roof rack at the

07:52same time?

07:53They should be one and the same, surely.

07:56Interior's nicely decked out, this is the Trailmaster variant, which is the slightly

08:03more rugged version with cloth seats.

08:05We do have an optional leather package up here on the dashboard, but for the most part

08:08it's sort of wiped down friendly.

08:12I like the positioning, I like that there isn't a gauge cluster here, we've just got

08:15a little screen for my various warning messages and things of that nature.

08:22I like that we've got this great big panel up here, of course, reminiscent of a plane.

08:28They know the market they're going for, don't they?

08:30Ultimately it's the kind of slick, off-road, maybe overland kind of James Bond, sycophant

08:37loving, all of the kind of ruggedness and, oh, I drive an updated Defender, you know?

08:45If I fall into that trap, I'd have one of these, it's so cool.

08:51So Ineos, Sir Jim and all of his team set out to bring to market a modern day Defender

09:00now.

09:01Have they succeeded?

09:02You'd have to say yes, they have succeeded, because this is a modern day Defender, quirks

09:08and all.

09:10The question you'll have to ask yourself is, is it worth the price?

09:14This one that I'm driving is around $85,000, which is a lot of money, but then again, if

09:21you're going to use it as a utilitarian vehicle on a farm or a building site, then I could

09:28plausibly see you buying one of these.

09:32You'll just have to accept that your drives to and from the construction site or the farm

09:37might not be as carefree and relaxing as they would be in something like the new Defender.

09:44The unfortunate truth is that Jaguar Land Rover made the decision to end the production

09:49of the Defender because they felt times had moved on, they felt that people wanted something

09:55more out of their utility vehicles.

09:58Is this a vehicle I would do hundreds and hundreds of miles in?

10:00Probably not.

10:01It would be a tiresome experience.

10:04But here, well, I've had a wonderful time in the Ineos, I've got to say.

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